“The passenger boats, once so common in the canals, are fast disappearing; like the diligences, they have been replaced by the system of tram-cars which now cross the country, but here and there this old-fashioned means of communication between the towns and villages still survives, and it is certainly a delightful experience to make a journey on market day in one of these arks. It is generally a long and rather narrow boat, low in the water, and usually painted green and white, with a low-roofed deck cabin divided into two compartments running the entire length, with clean board seats, and tiny lace-curtained windows, the floor scrubbed with sand until it is almost as white as snow. The roof is covered with a mixture of sand and pulverized shells, on a foundation of bitumen to hold it. It is most delightful to sail or be pulled along by ‘boy power’ through the country between the ‘pollarded green banks’ and look upon the changing landscape and the brown-armed mills in legions engaged in battle against the water enemy. * * * * * “The very laws of nature have here been reversed, for disregarding the injunction, every house is builded upon the sand, and the whole coast is held together practically by straws. There being little or no wood in the country whole forests have been brought hither in ships and buried as pile foundations for the cities. Save in the Island of Urk in the Züyder Zee there is not a stone to be found anywhere. Yet artificial mountains (almost) have been brought in vessels from Sweden and Norway and in masterful and ingenious manner erected as barriers against the sea.” * * * * * Concerning the people of Holland, Mr. Edwards has this to say: “The superficial observer will perhaps find that the people move more slowly and deliberately than his standard demands; that there are not enough of the quaint costumes, of which he has read so much, to be seen in the large centers, to satisfy his sense of the picturesque; but for him whose eyes are open to the glory of attainment and the greatness of art, whose mind is attuned to effects of environment upon the development of character, who can appreciate the brave and successful attempts of a people grown out of the very soil to ameliorate sorrow, poverty, and suffering, and who have succeeded in spite of adverse conditions and climate in establishing an almost ideal form of civilization and government, I say no land has so much to offer as little Holland. As the poet says: